Hendrik van Heuraet
Hendrik van Heuraet (* probably September 8, 1634 in Haarlem, † around 1660 probably in Leiden ) was a Dutch mathematician.
The date of birth is not known exactly, but can narrow down from 2 February to 8 September 1634 - the instrument of transfer of his heritage that he could compete with the earliest age of 21, dated September 8, 1655. His father Abraham van Heuraet (died 1651) was a clothier who had moved from Hamburg to Haarlem and there in 1631 married Maria de Coninck. The family went through hard times when her mother died in 1636 and his father came temporarily into financial difficulties. He studied from 1653 at the Leiden University Medical. In addition, he studied privately in mathematics Frans van Schooten, as well as Johan Hudde and Christian Huygens. In 1655 he became financially independent by his legacy. 1658 he studied with Hudde at the Protestant university in Saumur, before he continued his medical studies in Leiden.
Heuraet belonged to the circle of mathematicians (such as Huygens, Slusius, Hudde, Jan de Witt ) by Frans van Schooten, the more developed the analytic geometry of Descartes in Leiden. Heuraet dealt in particular with rectification of curves ( arc length ). Specifically, it was in a letter of 1658 ( Epistola de trans mutatione curvarum linearum in rectas ) to van Schooten the arc length of a parabola as integral to, as well as independently William Neile at another curve and general Pierre de Fermat around the same time. The reduction of the provision of an arc length on an area determination was seen by the then mathematicians as a major advance. In the same year there was therefore also a priority dispute with Huygens. Heuraet part of his work to the mathematicians in the early history of analysis. Some of his results were as an appendix to van Schoo Tens Latin translation of Descartes published Geometry (second edition in two volumes in 1659, 1661).
About his later life little is known. He is mentioned in a letter from Huygens in 1659, but not in later letters.